Beaufort County school posts photos of students depicting Adolf Hitler to Facebook

Saturday

Feb 3, 2018 at 7:49 AM

Dan Hunt @DanHuntBT

Photos posted to Okatie Elementary School’s Facebook page that showed some fifth-grade students depicting dictators, notably two children dressed as Adolf Hitler doing the Nazi "sieg heil" salute, prompted negative feedback and uproar among some parents and members of the community over the weekend.

According to Beaufort County Board of Education spokesman Jim Foster, the controversy stemmed from a "wax museum" project that about 90 Okatie students participated in Jan. 26. The project required students to research a historical figure then dress up as the famous figure at the project’s culmination.

Foster said they were encouraged to hold a pose like a wax figure. And the two students depicting Hitler "chose to" salute because "apparently they had seen photos of the Nazi salute while doing their research."

One of the students was wearing what appeared to be a homemade swastika armband.

There were a wide range of the historical figures depicted. A handful of students chose presidents (John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Barack Obama and Donald Trump). Other choices included Rosa Parks, Henry Ford, Muhammad Ali, Susan B. Anthony and the Wright Brothers.

Some students depicted imperialist dictators such as Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Hideki Tojo and Kim Jong-Un.

Pictures of the students dressed as Hitler doing his regime’s salute grabbed the attention of several parents on the school’s Facebook page with comments describing the depictions as "absolutely disgusting", "tone-deaf" and "disgraceful".

All pictures pertaining to the project were removed from Facebook over the weekend.

Principal Jamie Pinckney, who posted the images, said in a post Monday, "I would like to express my sincere apologies to our community members and parents for any pictures that were posted from our ‘Wax Museum’ presentations last Friday that caused any hurt or offense.

"It is not and was not our intent to sensationalize or glorify the acts of any of the dictators or public figures represented."

She concluded the post with, "History is not always pretty and nice but we hope by teaching our students about the past it is not repeated."

The ensuing conversations sparked a debate about how history’s most infamous chapters should be presented to students.

The Beaufort County Board of Education released a statement Tuesday afternoon.

"The Beaufort County Board of Education apologizes that pictures depicting students dressed as Adolph Hitler and raising an arm in a Nazi salute were recently published on a school’s social media page," the statement reads. "While the Board is committed to ensuring the accurate and appropriate teaching of historical events and persons, we realize the posting of photographs and resulting comments touch on emotional and, for some, horrific, images, memories, and topics.

"Posting the photographs without the context of students’ projects, research, and historical input regarding Hitler’s crimes evidenced a lack of proper understanding of the emotions which may result from such images."

The county’s release went on to say that on Tuesday, Superintendent Jeff Moss and Pinckney met with the rabbi of Hilton Head’s Congregation Beth Yam Synagogue, Brad Bloom.

Bloom, who referred to the pictures as "inflammatory," said Wednesday that the pair of educators seeked him out for the meeting.

"I didn’t ask for this meeting. They invited me. So they’re obviously solutions-oriented," Bloom said. "Leadership met. We sat down, looked each other in the eyes, talked frankly and we carved out a tentative solution."

Bloom said that Moss and Pinckney agreed to partner with the synagogue on parts of the social studies curriculum.

"We’re not in the blame-game. We want to make things better for the kids, for the faculty and for the parents because the mistakes of not teaching these subjects is much greater than the issue of hurt feelings," Bloom said.

"We agreed that the principal will meet with her faculty with the goal of having a collaborative effort to bring in some resources to kind of do it over again — sometimes, I’m hoping, with some types of artifacts which we have in our possession," he said.

The rabbi added that he hopes to bring in students from Hilton Head Island High School that participated in the March of the Living program this past year to talk to the elementary schoolers.

March of the Living is an approved study available to high schoolers that sends participants to Warsaw for one week culminating in a "march" through Auschwitz concentration camp. They fly to Israel for a second week to, as Bloom describes it, "see the other side of the coin."

"We’re going to bring them in — God willing — so that teens who have seen with their own eyes what a concentration camp looks like can talk to kids," Bloom said. "That’s a little bit more effective than bringing in an average person like myself."

Bloom said he came away from the meeting with Moss and Pinckney "thinking that there’s a willingness to work together."

"I’m hopeful and optimistic that they will follow through," he said. "The ball is in their court. My job is to get the resources together and their job is to figure out how to do this because they’re the educators and it’s their school."

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